Some cities are made of magic. Hamilton, Ontario is one of those cities. It's a marriage of industry and nature, with an escarpment painted with trees, grassy fields, waterfalls, a downtown smudged by time, a waterfront choked with chimneys and red hot steel manufacturing. It's one of the best places on Earth, a gem of a city with a beautifully rich history, exploding with character, constantly rebirthing itself.
One of the best things about Hamilton is meeting interesting people. There's something to be said of this modern sanitized world we've scrubbed down, is that there are hardly any interesting people around anymore. I'll get haters for this (bite me), but take Toronto for instance. That city is as dull and lifeless as any backwater hamlet you'd find in rural Ontario (no offense to you rural Ontarians; I came out of Norfolk myself, but there's only so many times you can watch a four wheeler go by and declare "I'll be damned that's a truck..." - anyways stick with me here, I'm gonna really give it to the Toronto snobs.) Once upon a time Toronto had the edge and character of Chicago, or perhaps a younger New York. Where is it, now? Dead. The decay of gentrification, condominium abominations and chain-store sameness has taken what was once a lively city and bleached it to sleep. Suburbs galore - fucking gag. Don't even get me started on the unaffordability.
Sure, you might have pockets of the old city, new cafes, an old pub or theater not yet touched by Gentrification's cold dead fingers, some great restaurants, but they're disappearing and fast. And with it, all your interesting people. The rough-edged, unwashed masses that aren't polite, don't suck up the puke from the nice cheery establishment and spew it out as if it's their own, the artists who couldn't give a single fuck about government grants but who instead create out of burning passion and a zesty spite against the current norms, the counter thinkers, the indignant doers, the dangerous ones, the challengers - where the hell are they?
I'll tell you where they are. They're right here in Hamilton. They've taken their licks and they've dished out plenty of their own. Jesus God, I can't tell you how much I love them. They'll give you the shirts off their backs. They're hard workers, tough workers, not just in steel but in whatever they put their rough, gnarled hands to, they do it well. They're the bakers who told the local mob chieftain to piss off when bombings exploded all over this city. They're the unruly band of misfits who stood toe to toe with neo-Nazis on King Street and scared them off. They fight for what's right.
And they're damn proud of their city. My city. Hamilton.
Oh yeah, Hamilton's got problems. Boy, you better believe it's got problems. The roads are shit. Mayor's an idiot. City Council are a bunch of useless lazy-ass crooks (with few exceptions). Drugs run rampant here. Shootings happen daily. Entire streets are shuddered. There's a reason film crews love shooting dystopian movies here. Hamilton has been robbed by the very people appointed to serve her.
But I'll tell you what else Hamilton has. Hamilton has love. Hamilton has grit. Hamilton has community. We're a people that help one another, support each other, even when you've pissed each other off. We bond over shitting on the mayor and her inept city council, we cheer on our beloved Ticats, we're damn proud of locals who were cultivated here and grew up to be somebodies, Rita Chiarelli, Martin Short, Eugene Levy, Tim Horton (obviously), Stan Rogers, Sylvia Fraser, and countless others, many who have yet to be born.
Hamilton deserves far, far more than her given reputation. Certainly deserves far more respect from Toronto and its polite citizenry. Our most beloved, most gracious, most wise, most eminent premier, Ford, could stand some lessons in respect for this city. Hamilton deserves a lot more.
Why this rant? Because I want to explain why I wrote Steeltown Dreaming. All great cities deserve their myths. Myths tells us who we are, why we exist, where we've been, where we are, and where we're going. A people without myth is an orphaned people.
I was wondering why it is that over the last fifty years (conveniently the span of my lifetime) there have been many times when Hamilton appeared to be on the cusp of something big, but never fully realized the dream or maybe any benefit at all, because of - something.
- Margaret Shkimba, "All Happy Cities Are Alike: Each Unhappy City Is Unhappy In Its Own Way", Reclaiming Hamilton: Essays From The Ambitious City, edited by Paul Weinberg.
A city struggling to reach her dream. The promise near at hand, yet always delayed. Almost, but not yet. When will the dream come true? That was my question. That's still my question. God knows I don't have the answer. In this unfeeling world, where heartfelt emotion is mocked and cold, cruel cynicism praised, we are in need of myths that tell us the dark night of the soul is only for a season. The triumph of a people's spirit is in their stories. We have too many hot takes on social media about why the night is so dark, and not enough storytellers leading us through the caves. This is my attempt, not to lead anyone, but to guide myself through that dark night, tending the open wounds of a hurting city whose leaders horde all the bandages.
Steeltown Dreaming tells the story of a lost people finding their way home. They are not a perfect people. You'll even hate some of them, and rightly so. You'll also pity them. The heroes aren't your movie heroes. They're regular folks. Good, flawed people. It's a story set in a surrealist world, a fantasy world built on the back of a red Volkswagen Bus (if you've visited the Hamilton Art Gallery you'll know exactly where this comes from). It's a world where Giants are crucified between condominium towers, stars are gathered from street puddles, and steelforged kaiju climb the Pigott Building.
This is my attempt at building the myth of a city that has stumbled, but will get up. Like Aengus wandering, we will "walk among long dappled grass, and pluck till time and times are done, the silver apples of the moon, the golden apples of the sun."
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